How Does the Self Grow

Don E. Hamachek (1991)

You and I have become the persons we are as the self that characterizes each of us evolved slowly from an undifferentiated five to seven pound (in most cases) mass of vulnerable potential at birth to our current highly differentiated and tightly defended sense of personal identity. The evolution of that self continues throughout life, although, for most of us, it proceeds more slowly and with fewer dramatic changes. It is a long and complex process that involves an ongoing interaction between our genetic potentials and environmental experiences.

Figure 1-1 is a schematic overview of the self's development. Basically, it is an effort to reduce an enormously long and complex process to its simplest and most basic components. I have taken some of the most frequently mentioned and commonly discussed aspects of the self and endeavored to show how they may relate and interconnect along a developmental continuum.

As depicted in Figure 1-1, the beginnings of the self occur with the aid of four primary input channels: auditory cues, physical sensations, body image cues, and personal memories. Each of these experiential channels is an important source of information to young children about how they are faring in their personal and interpersonal worlds. Achieving a sense of self is an accomplishment that develops by degrees and is shaped over time by more and complex understandings. There are indications from contemporary research that infants' personality development and educational potential begin at a tender age. For example, after 17 years of research on the behavior and development of infants between birth and three years of age, White (1975) concluded, ". . . our studies show that the period that starts at eight months and ends at three years is a period of primary importance in the development of a human being" (p. 4).

Since we cannot directly assess the nature of children's growing awareness, we must appraise the stages through which children become aware of themselves largely through an inferential process. The first stage of children's self-awareness occurs when they begin to learn that they are separate from others, that the caregiver's body is not part of their own. This is what Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979) have called the existential self, the fundamental sense of being separate from others. Until this happens, we can't really talk about a child having a self-concept at all.

The awareness of this separation appears to develop during the first eight to 12 months, during which time the understanding of object permanence occurs. Basically, infants learn that objects continue to exist even when the infants can't see or feel them any longer. This is an enormous cognitive step toward developing a sense of self. Just as infants come to see the mother as a "continuing event," a "permanent object" who continues to exist even when not seen, so, too, do they gradually develop an awareness of themselves as existing continuously in time and space. This is followed by infants learning that individual objects remain the same from one encounter to another. When the mother goes away and then comes back again, it is the same mother both times; the rattle is the same, the crib is the same object each time the infant is placed in it, and so on. This understanding is called object identity. Together, object permanence (things continue to exist when not seen) and object identity (things continue to exist in the same form when not seen) are prerequisite understandings to developing a sense of self-the existential self mentioned earlier. For example, think of several of the most important people in your life. Now try to imagine them not existing when you're apart from them. Imagine them appearing as different people the next time you see them.

Disconcerting, isn't it? The point is, knowing that the important people in our lives do exist even when we're not with them, and that they very likely will be the same as we remember them the next time we meet, frees us to be our own separate, individual selves because there is a certain reassurance and reduction in anxiety when we know that the people we love (and who, we presume, love us) are alive and well and the same as ever. In a much more complex and unconscious way, a somewhat similar process may constitute the undercurrent of an infant's newly developing sense of self.

The next step in the beginning of self-awareness is the development of the categorical self another term of Lewis and Brooks-Gunn. This happens as young children come to define themselves in terms of a set of categories, such as gender, age, size, color, and specific skills or knowledge. One sign that children have achieved this understanding is that they begin to recognize themselves and to use their own names. Research has shown that by the time children are be tween 18 and 24 months of age, they recognize themselves in mirrors, name themselves in pictures, and look more at their own pictures than at the pictures of other children (Gallup, 1979; Dickie and Strader, 1974). In addition, they are able to categorize themselves and others in terms of correct gender identity by about two and one-half years of age (Thompson, 1975), and between three and five years of age, they are able to make distinctions on the basis of age (Edwards and Lewis, 1979); for example, they are able to sort photographs into groups such as "little children," "big children," "parents," and "grandparents." They are also able to identify themselves as "little children" or "big children." By the time children are about five years of age, the basic foundation has been laid for how the self will grow and for the way that self-concept will develop. The vast array of categories into which children place themselves (or are placed into by others)-sex, height, weight, age, intelligence, athletic ability, and so on-are merely descriptive labels. It is important to remember that each label carries with it a certain positive and negative charge, which is what affects self-concept for better or worse. For example, it is one thing to be called a "girl" (if that is what one is), but it is quite another to be labeled "just a girl" or a "dumb girl." It is one thing for a five-year-old child to know that he weighs 70 pounds but quite another to know that others see him as a "fat kid."

As children move through their school years, learning more and more about themselves and the world they live in, their self-concept grows increasingly more complex. This was nicely shown in a study by Montemayor and Eisen (1977), who asked a group of fourth-, sixth-, eighth-, tenth-, and 12th- grade students each to write 20 different answers to the question "Who am I?"

Younger children's answers focused on externally visible categories, such as their age, size, home address, or favorite activities. Older children, on the other hand, focused more on internal matters, such as their beliefs, relationships to people, and their personality characteristics. You can understand these sorts of differences in the following two examples. Notice the differences in complexity and level of sophistication between them.

Nine year old, fourth grade boy

My name is Bruce C. I have brown eyes. I have brown hair. I have seven people in my family. I have great! eye site. I have lots! of friends. I live on 1923 Pinecrest Dr. I'm going on 10 in September. I'm a boy. I have an uncle that is almost 7 feet tall. My school is Pinecrest. My teacher is Mrs. V. I play Hockey! I'm almost the smartest boy in the class. I LOVE! food. I love fresh air. I LOVE school.

Seventeen-year-old, 12th-grade girl:

I am a human being. I am a girl. I am an individual. I don't know who I am. I am a Pisces. I am a moody person. I am an indecisive person. I am an ambitious person. I am a very curious person. I am not an individual. I am a loner. I am an American (God help me). I am a Democrat. I am a liberal person. I am a radical. I am a conservative. I am a pseudo-liberal. I am an atheist. I am not a classifiable person (i.e., I don't want to be).

As personal experience widens and intellectual functioning deepens, the self differentiates further; children gain in their abilities to understand their world more fully (to be the "knower" or "doer") and to see themselves as objects in the outside world (to be the "known"). As seen in Figure 1-1, the self-as-object involves attributes that are physical (how one looks), social (how one relates), emotional (how one feels), and intellectual (how one thinks). These attributes interact with that aspect of the self that comes to know through its perceiving, performing, thinking, and remembering functions. The component of the self that is the knower constitutes the "I" or the "agent of experience," and that dimension of the self that is the known constitutes the "me" or "the content of experience."
As delineated further in Figure 1-1, the interactive combination of these attributes and functions leads to the development of two core ingredients of the self, namely, self-concept (ideas about oneself) and self-esteem (feelings and evaluations about oneself). Self-concept can be more specifically differentiated into the perceived self (the way people see themselves) and into what can be referred to as the "real" self (the way a person really is, as measured more objectively through tests or clinical assessments) and the "ideal" self (the way a
person would like to be). Out of all of this emerges what might be called personality, which, depending on who is describing it, can be either the sum total of (1) one's own internal self-perceptions, or (2) of another person's external perceptions of that individual.